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Opinion
Nuclear Deal and India's Place in a Multipolar World
by K. Subrahmanyam
US President George W. Bush reportedly intends to write individually to
heads of governments of 44 other member nations of the Nuclear Suppliers
Group (NSG), urging that India be given a clean waiver from the present NSG
guidelines which do not permit nuclear commerce with any non-signatory to
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which has not placed all its
nuclear facilities under the full scope safeguards of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The US administration has also prepared a draft waiver resolution acceptable
to India and has forwarded it to Germany, the current chair of the NSG. The
issue will be considered by that body on Aug 21-22.
These actions of the US have been sought to be interpreted by some
conspiracy theorists as indicative of US commercial interest in the Indian
nuclear industry and as a means of seducing India into a subordinate
strategic partnership to the US in Asia, with particular intent to promote
military containment of China and isolation of Iran. Such conspiracy
theorists are not interested in paying attention to India and China taking a
common stand vis-à-vis the US and the European Union on the agricultural
issue in the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations. Nor do they want
to pay attention to the slight thawing of relations between the US and Iran.
Nor can they explain why Russia and France, two of the strongest
protagonists of a multipolar system, also happen to be the most fervent
supporters of the India-US nuclear deal and exceptionalisation of India from
the NSG guidelines.
Most of the above misperceptions arise out of inadequate understanding of
today's multipolar world and India's place in it. When the Cold War ended,
the European countries, Japan and China did not need the US security
protection against a superpower adversary -- the Soviet Union. In the last
16 years the European Union has emerged as the pre-eminent economic entity
in the international system with the US slipping into the second place.
Russia, after a period of decline during the Yeltsin years, has re-emerged
as a major power and a major supplier of energy for Europe, Japan and China.
All the major powers, including Russia, are members of G-8, the elite club
of the world's most industrialized nations which attempt to shape macro
economic policies of the world. Brazil, India and China are invited to this
group as fastest growing economies which are likely to influence global
economic and trade developments in the near future. China is already doing
so. In this world of balance of power, there is both cooperation and
competition among all major powers.
In the multipolar world the major powers are interested in ensuring the
faster development of the new and aspiring entrants to ensure that no single
power will attempt to dominate the system disproportionately. The faster the
expansion of the global economic pie, the smaller the share of the US
economy in it. Similarly, the faster the growth of India, South Korea,
Vietnam and Indonesia, the better countervailing balance against China in
Asia and the world. The multipolar international system today is therefore
not unfavorable to India's growth and progress as it was not to China's
growth in the 1980s and 90s. But India is the only major power which is
subjected to technology denial arising out of the technology ban imposed by
the London Suppliers Club, now expanded and known as NSG.
Against this background, India is one of the four countries which are
outside the NPT, the other three being Israel, Pakistan and North Korea.
Other 188 countries are members of the NPT. After conducting a nuclear test,
North Korea has agreed to dismantle its nuclear arsenal and rejoin the NPT
of which it was earlier a member. Israel has been in possession of its
arsenal even before the NPT was drafted and has no interest in civil nuclear
commerce. That leaves only India and Pakistan outside the NPT and
international nuclear commerce.
India has advanced nuclear technology, designed its own reactors, is
developing fast breeder reactors, doing research on the conversion of
thorium into U-233 to be used as fuel in future reactors and is a member of
the international research team for thermo nuclear energy research. Though
the London Suppliers Club, the predecessor of NSG, was set up as a response
to the 1974 Indian nuclear test, 34 years have passed since then with India
having a spotless record on nuclear proliferation.
The same cannot be said of Pakistan. It is not a power with advanced nuclear
technology, holds a record in nuclear proliferation and refuses to allow
access for the IAEA to A. Q. Khan, the arch proliferator. Therefore, as
President George Bush told General Pervez Musharraf before the international
TV cameras in March 2006, the two nations (India and Pakistan) are
different, have different histories and different needs.
Giving India the waiver and bringing it into the non-proliferation regime
and acknowledging its nuclear arsenal will be a gain for the international
nuclear nonproliferation regime and nuclear commerce and will make India a
stakeholder in the regime. Therefore, the very founders of the London
Suppliers Club (the NSG) - the US, Russia, the UK, France, Germany, Japan
and Canada - are in favor of the waiver and removing the impediments of
technology denial from India's growth. This explains the wide support to
this move. The smaller powers which have reservations on the waiver are
mostly focused on NPT as a dogma and are likely to be persuaded to take a
broader geo-strategic view.
The move of US House International Relations Committee chairman Howard
Berman to highlight the Hyde Act provisions on any future testing by India
will be countered by the US administration itself. The discretion to impose
sanctions on a country conducting a nuclear test is with the US president
under the US Atomic Energy Act of 1954. The Hyde Act seeks to circumscribe
this power and this will not be accepted by any US president. Nor can that
be a conditionality for NSG since that would subordinate the US president's
decisions to that of an international body, an issue on which the Americans
are very sensitive. Therefore, that issue will be settled in the US itself.
The time has come for India to take full advantage of the present
international strategic situation and make full use of multi-polarity for
its own faster growth.
(K. Subrahmanyam is India's pre-eminent analyst on strategic and
international affairs. He can be contacted at ksubrahmanyam51@gmail.com)
August 9, 2008
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